Anecdotes, Colonial History and Planetarity: Revisiting Decolonial Grammar with Ghosh’s The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis

Abstract

In our article, we consider the current ethics of planetarity and decolonial grammatology in the light of Amitav Ghosh’s The Nutmeg’s Curse. We begin by showing how Ghosh creates a form of anecdotal decoloniality that stands in sharp contrast with the kind of decolonial critique Ghosh had employed earlier his earlier works. We then argue that such a form can only be understood and appreciated in the light of planetary thinking’s indifference to history, in particular Dipesh Chakrabarty’s cautious reframing of it. We also argue that Ghosh tailors this form as a resistant alternative to the intimidating elitism of decolonial grammar. We conclude by showing how by such an exercise Ghosh provides the scope to release decolonial sensibility from its stultifying imprisonment within this grammar, for he views this sensibility as the ground for tailoring new eco-activisms that could effectively address multiple eco-crises embedded in the historical networks of colonial eco-exploitation.

Keywords:

• Ghosh
• decolonial thinking
• planetarity
• eco-crises

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In his entry on ‘Storied Matter’, collected in The Posthuman Glossary, Oppermann mentions that matter, though conventionally conceived as agentic in the new materialist paradigm, is also ‘densely storied’ (2020: 411).

2 Ghosh further states: ‘The muteness of Nature and the muteness of the brute are reflections of each other’ (2021: 189-90).

3 This depends on the globe/planet distinction Chakrabarty maintains throughout his writings: ‘The globe, I argue, is a humanocentric construction; the planet, or the Earth system, decenters the human’ (2021: 4).

4 For critiques on Chakrabarty’s universalism see Boscov-Ellen (2018); and Pasha (2020).

5 For details see Deleuze (1992: 49–63).

6 Refer to Deleuze and Guattari (1983: 75).

7 Therefore, his ethical enterprise consists in a delinking ‘from the illusion of the zero-point epistemology’ (2011: 160) and ‘engaging in epistemic disobedience and de-linking from the magic of the Western idea of modernity, ideals of humanity and promises of economic growth and financial prosperity’ (2011: 161).

8 Despite their attitudinal differences, there are certain points where Ghosh’s and Mignolo’s thoughts converge. For example, in talking about the indigenous notion of Runa, Mignolo sets the emergence of humanity at a very different point of origin (2018: 241) which very much evokes Ghosh’s take on Brutes in The Nutmeg’s Curse. See also Wynter (2003) and McKittrick (2015).

9 This corresponds to what we called differenciated indigeneity by which we mean a process of authentication and purification that ends up pinning down indigeneity as a homogenous whole. As pointed out by scholars like Scott Michealsen and Scott Culter Shershow (2007), Marco Vieira (2019), Mignolo’s whole project of decolonial delinking runs this separatist risk of reproducing a precolonial purity.

10 A futurity that Ghosh sketches like this: ‘It is essential now, as the prospect of planetary catastrophe comes ever closer, that those nonhuman voices be restored to our stories’ (2021: 257).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Saswat Samay Das

Saswat Samay Das is an Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. He has jointly authored Taking Place of Language (2013) and co-edited, most recently, Deleuze and the Global Terror (2021).

Ananya Roy Pratihar

Ananya Roy Pratihar is Assistant Professor in Communication Studies at the Institute of Management and Information Science, Bhubaneswar, India. She has jointly edited Technology, Urban Space and Network Community (2022).

Dipra Sarkhel

Dipra Sarkhel is a Research Fellow at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur who works in a broad area of recent continental thinking and critical theory. He is currently guest-editing a special issue titled Deleuze, Planetarity and Decoloniality for Deleuze and Guattari Studies (Edinburgh University Press).